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Senate leads hunt for shutdown and debt limit deal

Though the Senate was leading the search for a deal, the House and its fractious Republicans remained a possible headache in the coming week.

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Bipartisan leaders hold meeting with President Obama to try to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling. Linda So reports.(Newslook)

By ALAN FRAMAssociated Press

Sun., Oct. 13, 2013

WASHINGTON—With a possible default on U.S. government obligations just three days away, talks between the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate on Sunday failed to break an impasse over the spending level for a stopgap measure to reopen the government two weeks after much of it shut down.

Senators Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, spoke cordially by telephone but remained deadlocked. The stumbling block is over spending levels, the length of a debt-ceiling increase and how long a temporary spending measure should keep the government open until a longer-term budget deal can be reached.

Republicans reacted with frustration over what they see as the shifting demands of a Democratic leadership intent on inflicting maximum damage on adversaries who are sinking in the polls and becoming increasingly isolated.

“The Democrats keep moving the goalposts,” Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a lead Republican negotiator, said Sunday. “Decisions within the Democratic conference are constantly changing.”

But Democratic aides said a deal taking shape among a bipartisan group of senators offered Democrats nothing beyond a reopening of the government and temporary assurances that the government will not default in the coming days. Those should not be seen as concessions but basic obligations of the Congress, they say.

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Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said earlier on ABC’s This Week that he could feel a deal “coming together” as Reid and McConnell prepared for their second day of talks.

Congressional negotiations to end a U.S. fiscal crisis that has gripped Washington and spooked financial markets hung by a thread on Saturday after they broke down in the House of Representatives and were in preliminary stages in the Senate. (JONATHAN ERNST / REUTERS)

But Graham also warned his colleagues that the longer the showdown lasts, the more damage they were doing to Congress.

“To my colleagues in the House on both sides, and to my friends in the Senate, we’re ruining both institutions,” he said.

Earlier, Republican Sen. Rob Portman said President Barack Obama was to blame for his refusal to deal with the fiscal crisis. “This is the first time in history that a president of the United States has said, ‘Look, I’m not even going to talk about it,’ ” Portman said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

He added later: “The president should engage. You’ve got to deal with the underlying problem, which is the spending problem.”

On CNN’s State of the Union, Republican Sen. Rand Paul played down fears that a default on the debt this week would be the cause of a downgrade of the nation’s credit rating, as happened during a similar showdown in August 2011. The downgrade, he said, was not caused by the threat of default but by the size of the U.S. debt.

“The vast majority of people are afraid of what this growth of our debt is going to do to us,” he said.

Meanwhile, a crowd converged on the World War II Memorial on Washington’s National Mall, pushing through barriers Sunday morning to protest the memorial’s closing under the government shutdown.

Republican senators Mike Lee and Ted Cruz were part of the protest, along with former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

Cruz and Lee are among the hardcore conservative tea party-backed lawmakers who refuse to keep the government operating unless Obama agrees to defund his signature health care overhaul.

“Let me ask a simple question,” Cruz told the crowd. “Why is the federal government spending money to erect barricades to keep veterans out of this memorial?”

Black metal barricades have lined the front of the memorial since the government closed Oct. 1. That’s when more than 300 National Park Service workers who staff and maintain the National Mall were put on unpaid furlough.

As the crowd entered the memorial plaza, they chanted “Tear down these walls” and “You work for us.” They sang “God bless America” and other songs.

Later, some protesters carried metal barricades that look like bicycle racks from the memorial to the White House and stacked them up outside the gates, confronting police in riot gear. Some protesters carried signs reading “Impeach Obama.”

The memorial has become a political symbol in the bitter fight between Democrats and Republicans over who is at fault since the shutdown began on Oct. 1. Earlier rallies have focused on allowing access for World War II veterans visiting from across the country with the Honor Flight Network.

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